The moment macOS Game Mode turns on, Gamely disables all four Hot Corners—and restores them exactly when the game ends. Runs in the background as a single 🎮 in the menu bar.
There's no public Game Mode API. Gamely detects it reliably from the system unified log, then reads and writes Dock preferences—no action needed from you.
Watches log stream; when gamepolicyd prints "Game mode is on", it knows a fullscreen game started.
Saves your current Hot Corner settings, sets all four to "no action", and applies with killall Dock—invisible while fullscreen.
Writes your original values back when the game ends. Even if Gamely crashes mid-game, the next launch restores automatically—never any mess.
Does its one job well, and bothers you with nothing else.
No guessing, no process scanning—strictly follows macOS's official Game Mode switch.
Remembers even modifier keys, so your corners come back identical after the game.
Originals are stored in its own prefs; an unexpected quit is detected and restored on next launch.
Registers a login item via SMAppService—set it once and forget it exists.
No Dock icon, no notifications—just the gamepad in your menu bar. The Settings window is there when you need it.
Flip the master switch and Gamely does nothing—or restore Hot Corners manually any time.
Games that never turn on Game Mode (Steam, CrossOver, Whisky) can be added to a list; when one is frontmost, the corners pause too.
繁體中文, English, 日本語, 한국어, Español, Português—follows your system language.
Checks GitHub once a day and adds an update item to the menu when a new version is out. Installed with Homebrew? Just brew upgrade.
Four steps, about a minute. Step 3 uses Terminal — don't worry, it's just copy and paste.
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Gamely.app && open /Applications/Gamely.app
Wait, what is this? Gamely is a free, self-signed app that isn't notarized by Apple. I don't make apps for a living; I just build small things I find useful and good-looking, and Apple's yearly developer fee isn't in the budget… So macOS blocks the first launch. This line only removes the quarantine flag added when you downloaded it, then opens Gamely. It changes nothing else, and you only need to do it once.
Use Homebrew? One line installs it, quarantine flag included, and brew upgrade keeps it current.
brew install --cask rocavence/tap/gamely
A macOS menu bar utility. The moment Game Mode turns on, it sets all four Hot Corners to "no action", so a stray mouse can't pop Mission Control, Desktop or the Screen Saver mid-game. When the game ends, it restores your original settings, modifier keys included.
Then you have to remember to turn them off, remember to turn them back on, and remember what each of the four corners was set to. Gamely does both automatically, following Game Mode.
macOS only turns on Game Mode for fullscreen apps categorized as games. Windows games running through a translation layer usually don't qualify, so Gamely has nothing to follow. Add them as Forced Apps and Gamely pauses Hot Corners whenever one is frontmost.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Game Mode first appeared in Sonoma.
Gamely is self-signed, not notarized by Apple, so macOS blocks the first launch. Run the one-line command in the install steps above to remove the quarantine flag; installing with Homebrew handles it for you.
No. Your original settings are stored in Gamely's own preferences; the next launch sees that Game Mode has ended and restores them. Quitting Gamely normally also restores them first.
No. Gamely is free and open source under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; the code is on GitHub.
When I game, a stray mouse hitting a corner and popping Mission Control genuinely ruins it. The system has Game Mode but ignores Hot Corners—so I made the missing piece.
Gamely is tiny, open source, and free. If it spares you that one buzzkill too, it was worth it.
@rocavenceAuthor · GitHub